Picture taken 10/12/01 at 1 year of age.

DOB: 10/1/00, Sex: Female, Color: Medium Brown with Black Points

Sire: El Italiano 502 (True Black)

Dam: Princess Leia (Accoyo King line)

Coco's story: Denise and I were at the 2001 AOBA National Conference in Portland, Oregon and while Denise was attending an all-day Wednesday class, I took the opportunity to visit the breeder stalls in the two barns.  While touring the last half of the second barn, a brown juvenile huacaya caught my attention from a row or so away.  I went over to have a closer look and was surprised by the overall package I saw.  This alpaca, DFA Coco, was striking in appearance, a real eye catcher due to her balance and stature.  Fortunately, someone was at the stall and I was allowed to have a look at her fleece.  It was fine and exhibited a well defined staple structure with a higher frequency and unusually deep crimp style. The hand was remarkably soft for a dark fleece and notably free of medulation.

As she made for a pretty impressive package, I figured she must have a notable show record so inquired how she had done. I was told this was to have been her first show but unfortunately, the owner's, had not submitted paperwork in time, therefore, no judge had seen her yet.

This came as a bit of a surprise as ones like this are destined for the ring.  I was further surprised to learn she was for sale as this kind of complete package does not come along very often. I seized the ring by taking the opportunity to request a hold on her purchase.

Several hours later, while I was waiting for Denise to finish her full day fiber class (and give me the checkbook), a group of alpaca breeders from down-under tracked me down.  One of the fellows, an Australian breeder, who I understood had a well recognized program, said he had come across a decent brown female and heard I was in the process of buying her.  We thought we would together have a re-look at her and went back over to Coco's stall. He, and the rest of his group, must have spent what seemed to be 3 to 4 minutes going over her with no-one making a comment.  As, I was having a hard time reading his opinion and as I was curious if he shared any of my enthusiasm for her, I requested his overall score using 1 as a cull and 10 as a keeper.  He briefly examined her fleece again and then remarked he would give her a 7.  Now, I was thinking to myself she was nicer than this and in the range of an 8 to 8.5. I wondered what faults I had missed. Still keeping quiet, I took a quick review of her again when a thought sprung to mind. I then asked him, using this same 1 to 10 score, "what would the best alpaca on your ranch score?" He gave me a sly smile and said a 6.

So, as it turns out, we were both impressed with her, he was just leaving a little more room at the top!

He asked, and I confirmed that I was indeed planning on buying her and Coco later became the newest member of our foundation herd (this of course, after I talked Denise into handing over the checkbook).

Coco never did make it into the show ring as we sent her out for breeding early in the fall to Jericho 69i. This is the breeding which gave us A.L. Paca's Adora Mora Yu, a 4x Color Champion (and a 7.1 on the Australian score of 10).

07/25/06 - Doug